CASES
The best way to illustrate the modus operandi of the German army are casestudies. They describe the reality of the battlefield against the background of the way the German army was organized. It is quite difficult to get a clear picture of this reality because the German army is time and again framed as a rigid organisation with fanatical officers rather brainless soldiers. In fact it was a very clever organised army with top quality officers and well educated and trained soldiers with a proven command concept, that of Auftragstaktik. The Germans spent more than a century to perfect this command concept and invested time and attention to make it work in practice. The Allies had nothing to counter the intellectual and practical power of this command concept, except for an overwhelming majority of people and equipment.